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Comment by nathanwh | Hacker News Reader

I don’t know that I’ve ever seen such a short article so clearly demonstrate how much don’t actually care about the people who they are to trying to placate. They’re changing the feather because it’s apparently offensive to reference it, but they’re not changing the name because it would cost money. Even though the name is way more tightly tied to the people than the feather. I don’t actually care about the logo or the name I just find having the dichotomy so clearly spelled out interesting.

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It's in the FAQ.

When a name has been in use as long and is as widely used as ours, the legal, technical, and financial ramifications are broad and deep. A name change effort would have a hefty price tag, would take multiple years to implement, and would have to be led almost entirely by volunteers. As a 501(c)(3) not-for-profit organization, it is not possible to divert the majority of our funding and volunteers away from our primary mission of providing software for the public good, especially as the foundation prepares for mandatory changes that will come from the Cybersecurity Resilience Act (CRA) and other pending legislation. Because of these very real challenges, at this time it would be very difficult to implement a legal name change for The ASF.

Because of these reasons, the ASF Board has decided to prioritize changing the logo and branding and not changing the organization’s name at this time. It is important to us that we take whatever actionable steps we can now to create a more welcoming and inclusive community.

I did read that part, I just feel that the idea that somehow something good comes from removing the feather (which is negligible expense relative to changing the name), is just plainly saying that we care about inclusivity but only so long as it’s not expensive. Which is more or less the policy of every large organization, but it’s rare that it gets said.

I read it as "we can't do it now because complex reasons, but we know it's still a problem and want to do it" and that feels pretty good. Like who's supposed to set the timeline for rectifying long-lived errors in judgement? Unwinding long-lived errors generally takes time.

It's cheaper to change the name and logo in one go, than to change the logo; then later change the name and logo.

I cannot agree they want to change the name, otherwise they would be.

As someone who once implemented a name change for a much, much smaller company, I can tell you this is just not so. You have to find and fix every contract, bank account, government registration, checkbook, domain name, knowledge base article…it’s endless. And some of those changes cost money in addition to time.

AIU using the feather along with the Apache name could be seen as mindlessly evoking the stereotypical image of a native American as in naive 1950/1960s Western movies, which adds insult to the act of cultural appropriation that is merely using the name.

Here's my cheap suggestion. Change the name from Apache Software Foundation to "A Software Foundation" (or even "ASF Software Foundation"). Change instances of 'Apache X' to 'ASF X'; ex Apache HTTPd becomes ASF HTTPd. The license becomes the ASF License.

You can do it in steps. Anything that's currently Apache X could become ASF X on its own schedule. asf.org seems to be managed by a foundation that changed its name away from ASF in 2010, so it might be available (presumably at some cost) for the ASF to make use of to replace apache.org over time.

This still costs money and time, but it would do the job over time, with a minimal upfront expenses.

I appreciate your suggestion of the recursive acronym, ASF Software Foundation.

Maintaining the trademark requires continued use of Apache. Without the domain name in control, the security implications are disastrous considering how much legacy technology has the domain name hard coded.

If they're going to change their name, they will of course need to abandon the old trademarks.

Anyone claiming their old trademarks for new, will have the same problem of appropriating an indigenous name, and also the issue of approrpriating an abandoned name. Trademark law allows it, but it's not a good look for the newcomer.

For the domain, I would imagine a very long transition. There's a reason the current owner of asf.org still maintains that despite changing their organizational name away in 2010. If ASF starts using a new name and domain name today, I'd expect it takes about 3 years for everything to be fully moved, but old links will need to continue to work for some time after that. Some sort of annual review with a usage threshold would be appropriate... if there's negligable requests to http(s)://httpd.apache.org by 2034, you can remove the A/AAAA records. And a year or two or five, after there are no longer any DNS records for apache.org, it can be transitioned to another organization. Perhaps a transition can be arranged sooner if shared usage can be agreed upon; the new owner could use www while deprecated names continue to redirect.

Things like Maven and numerous other XML namespaces come to mind that can’t exactly move. Then there’s the tons of dirty money to be made by domain squatting apache.org even if all the technical problems were solved because the site has a reputation. It would be like Google changing their domain name and letting the old domain lapse.

Letting the old domain lapse is silly. Presumably, it would eventually be transfered to an indingenous organization, after its use had been nearly extinguished.

There would be references that outlive a naming transition, of course. But if you read a 10 year old book and expect all the urls to work, that seems highly optimistic. It's uncool to change URLs, but stuff happens.

For XML namespaces, I think it's reasonable to keep the existing ones, but a) when there's a new version, use the new domain name exclusively; b) after some time make provisions for publishing old versions under both domain names. My experience with XML namespaces is that they look like a URL, but there isn't always useful content at that url anyway, it's really just a string that's hopefully unique. It's been a while since I used them, but I seem to recall some useful namespaces being tied to domains that were no longer in use as well.

I've used active standards where the standards body had disbanded and no original sources were available... You had to rely on documents saved and shared. It happens, it's part of life. At least if the ASF changes its name, it will continue to exist.

It's work, perhaps a lot of work, but it's tractable. IBM changed its name to IBM, AT&T changed its name to AT&T, ASF can change its name to ASF. Heck, GMAC changed its name to Ally.

It’d be great if the Apache Nations wanted to control the domain name, but they’re still mostly concerned with basics like clean water and other government services.

There's no legal ramification of changing their name. Companies change their names every so often; it doesn't erase their legal rights or obligations.

Technical? Not sure what huge problems they are, but as a Software Foundation you'd think they'd be well placed to deal with the issues.

Financial? That may be true, but it costs less if you do it as part of the one branding refresh.

If you change the name of your company without informing the bank, your creditors, your secured creditors, your shareholders, the state corporation commission, and your firms statutory agent, you will run into some legal problems quickly.

The legal ramifications of changing your name is a ton of documentation, notification, and registration.

You're not really describing that much effort in the scheme of things: make a filing and notify several parties. Annual accounts are a far bigger burden, and they have to be done.

Would you say there are “no legal ramifications,” or that there are legal ramifications that don’t constitute “that much effort”? I’m left a little unclear from your posts.

Ramification implies adverse unwarranted complexity. There are no ramifications, just a few straightforward requirements.

Just because the ASF's officers won't go to jail for changing the name doesn't mean there aren't any legal ramifications. Trademarks are a legal issue, for starters. Defending the Foundation's trademarks is a big part of what goes on, even if most of that work is done quietly and non-confrontationally.

Technical issues would involve for example the apache.org domain, and all the security issues from decades worth of links pointing to it.

A domain rewrite permanent redirect is pretty straightforward.

The irony is that the name is much worse than just the logo. Feathers are pretty common, even if they're often associated with Native Americans. The word "Apache" is only one thing: the actual name of a Native tribe. So changing the logo without changing the name doesn't do much, while changing the name while keeping the logo would.

They have addressed in TFA why they are changing the logo now and changing the name later.

That doesn't make their explanation any good.

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